It's the end of the world as we know it!

I know what will happen on 12/12/12 and 12/21/12.  The sun will come up so we can work and gather what we need for ourselves an our families, we will interact with our neighbors and if we are lucky hear a good story or two, in the evening we will talk about our day and the struggles and blessings of life with the ones we love. We will sleep and awaken to a brand new world; the one that is offered to us every morning.

These numbers times and dates are the cultural constructs of complex societies; driven by hierarchies, systems and agendas.  When these constructed parameters are perceived as being real, they control most people in a society in ways that maintain the system.  The real world has no sense of these numbers, the real world is too enchanted with the warmth of the sun, the abundant life of creation all around us.  What time is it in the real world?  It is; daytime or nighttime, it is summer or winter, spring or fall, it is planting time or harvest, it is time to fish or time to hunt, it is time to work or time to rest.  The end of the world and the beginning of the new earth is when we put to rest the calendars and clocks and awaken in the morning to once again live in the real world, connected, renewed and alive.

sovereignty of the human heart

"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."  Can we see past the simple morality issues here and dare to consider what Jesus was saying about the faculty of the human heart.  The heart is the seat of passion, intuition and the matrix of the imagination.  It is in this heart-space where every conscious being creates the world we live in.  This is sacred space where we accept the power of our humanity to join creator in his good work thinking on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. In this space we vision love displacing fear, light consuming darkness, kindness dispelling violence, hope dancing on the remains of despair.

Or we deny the power of Gods image expressed through our imagination allowing the victim to take up residence in the space of empowerment.  Or we abdicate our sovereignty and flood our creative palette with the images thrown at us continually. Some are benign even positive but simply not our own and we remain unengaged.  Others flood our world sent by those who wish to capture the power in each of us to further their own agendas.  We are drowning in images of violence, dark forces, sexuality without intimacy, betrayal, apocalypse and fear, fear, fear.  This is not about a morality play, it is not about being good. This is about the world we want to live in, beginning in the the sacred matrix of our imaginations. This is about the power of the human heart when fully engaged with the vision of love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and personal sovereignty

AMBIVALENENT

AMBIVALENENT

Weak and potent

Alive and broken

Magnificent and fucked up

Aware and clueless

Utopia the deception

Paradise the eternal now…………

…………………………………..

Adrift in a living sea, freed from the myth of stability

Am I fearful or have my fears simply lost their hiding place

Love you are the rock I cling to, wooing me with eternal embrace

You have played on my longing for security/death/certainty

and drawn me into the torrent that is life.

How can I bear the splendor, the terror of your fountains, your river carries me away

I am consumed

O Sweet awful river, ever moving, ever giving, ever expanding, never ending

This joy is more than a soul can bear

Devastated by the gaze of my beloved.

Epicurean Samadhi

Epicurean Samadhi

A beautiful September afternoon

I walk in the hills above the city

Admiring the art of wispy clouds overhead

Framed by the upper branches of ancient firs and oaks

Reunited again with my family of creation

Strolling through the Rose garden breathing fragrant air

The tangible sense of connection reaching beyond my horizons

A simple picnic overlooking the city

Mt. Hood hovering over a field of misty clouds

Our own ethereal Olympus seated majestically in the next dimension

I begin my feast… a solitary apple

Crisp green tinged with red striations

An apple offered from an ancient tree on a friends land

An apple not cultivated but offered without condition from its source

A fruit, an offering of communion, a gift of itself

My awareness also a gift, I will not simply consume

I will commune, merge with the gift I am now offered

I will receive the grace extended to the gift in the fruit

I bite into the flesh deeply deliberately slowly

Its lifeblood envelopes my tongue with sweet nectar

I receive the sacred alchemy birthed in the tree 

I taste the suns energy

It’s furious life streaming through the heavens

To find it’s receptive mate in the leaves of the apple tree

The energy cascading through branch and trunk

Pushing into deep roots causing them to seek

They burrow deeply hunting for the elements

Elements of water, mineral, nutrients

Nutrients offered up as the last gift of creatures in their passing

The final gift of a fading glory

Then the yang of this cosmic energy draws the dark treasures up

Back through the growing community of roots

Back through trunk and branch to the womb of the tree

Here the magic of creation brings together the seed

The love child of sun and earth and water and flesh

The precious seed encased in the nectar of her creation

As her promise is received in my own flesh

I am aware that this has been the gift in every apple

But perhaps for the first time in my life

I have been fortunate enough to recognize the gift

And finally say thank you

A letter to my best friend

Jesus I need to be secure in you.  It’s not enough to find peace in a concept… God is love… and that is an awesome concept.  It’s not enough to be secure in a powerful feeling… I am connected… I am one with all… I am a part of the universal mind. I need a concept and a power with a name and a face, one who understands me completely.

I need this because I am human.  I need this because every moment of transcendent bliss and empowerment eventually gives way to a moment of brokenness where I need the divine other more than the divine unity.  Sometimes I just need a friend, and Jesus you have always been the best friend I have ever had.  My Christian triumphalism may have been filled with rotting ego and dead mans bones, but my Christian brokenness has been filled with many moments of tender acceptance from a friend who always embraced me without the least judgment.

Jesus you taught me a path of union with the divine through intercession.  Not a unity with power and perfection, but a unity with brokenness and humanity.  Not a meditation into blissful light but a meditation into the prison cells of those bound by injustice and into the institutions filled with those broken in body and mind, deemed useless by society.  I had forgotten that this too is an experience of divine union.

Jesus I am proud to be your friend.  Your way is so misunderstood even by those of us who attempt to follow.  It has been terrifying to journey so far from what I thought were the safe shores.  I am so happy to encounter you here and see once again how amazing you are.  Your humility and kindness are medicine to my heart.

I can appreciate the many ways people connect to the divine and find meaning and community. I consider all who seek peace and tolerance in our weary world my brothers in arms.  Everyone must choose a path or no path.  I am finding in my convoluted journey that I still want to follow Jesus.

That's good stuff man, you should write a book.

What if some of the great spiritual leaders, whose life and teachings became the foundation of the worlds religions knew that in the future people would follow them based on a written text of scriptures. Why didn't they spend their time on earth writing those texts themselves?  If they could prophesy events in the future they surely would know that their followers would spend most of their energies studying arguing and sometimes killing each other over texts that someone else would be writing.  Why didn't they just write the text themselves?  Why instead did they send their energies making disciples, writing their legacies on the stained parchment of humanity. If they came back incognito and got involved in their movements today would they jump into the arguments of interpretation or simply begin making disciples again?  Hmmmm?

Better to be a happy idiot than a grumpy avatar.

Beauty is an excellent conveyor of truth.  She is ten times more so; when partnered with her twin sister suffering.  A third path can be found in the absurd. Enter Gods’ bouncy house of levity and let the nonsense draw a third eye on your funny bone.  Give your ego a good bath in the dirt of messy human-hood and see if you don’t feel cleaner with a humbled thinker and a bubbly belly laugh.  Better to be a happy idiot than a grumpy avatar.Hebrew Fasion HH

The passion for personal property may be the biggest source of poverty among the human race.

 

In Western materialist culture we are born into a mindset that could be termed a "mineset" or a paradigm built on a value of personal property in particular land ownership. I the West we consider this the measure of wealth and prosperity. In fact the former president of Rutgers college declared that this covetous mineset was the key to "civilizing Native Americans.  Merrill Gates stated: “We must make the Indian more intelligently selfish before we can make him unselfishly intelligent. We need to awaken in him wants. In his dull savagery he must be touched by the wings of the divine angel of discontent. Then he begins to look forward, to reach out. The desire for property of his own may become an intense educating force. The wish for a home of his own awakens him to new efforts. Discontent with the teepee and the starving rations of the Indian camp in winter is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers — and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars! ”

An communal mindset that is found in most aboriginal people as well as Acts Chapter 2 could be termed the "ourset".  This thinking defines wealth by the community small (neighborhood, village, tribe) and the community large ( all the two legged, four legged and every created thing that we experience a rich balance as we provide for one another in the circle of life). 

So you tell me who has found the true path to prosperity and abundance?

The MINESET or

The OURSET!

Celebating 230+ years of gettin my slice...

Once again, I have been mystified by folks: foaming at the mouth, pulling out their hair, writhing on the floor in agony and going into catatonic states over the Supreme Court ruling on the health care bill.  Then I got to thinking, with Independence Day coming up; they’re not upset about health care, they’re upset about taxes.  What could be more American than working yourself into a lather over taxation without “get the f*^$ away from my wallet you fascist $%&* my personal OK.  We can even look back on the first North American rave, held in Boston Harbor in 1773 with DJ “B.J.Rush. The crowd got so worked up dancing to “You Can’t Touch That Wallet” that they tore the venue to pieces.  The point being that the celebration of defending our right to money through outrage and violence is about as patriotic as it gets.  This is the foundation of our great republic (to quote Florence and the Machine) “keep your filthy fingers out of my pie”.  So how can I criticize my conservative friends who clearly hold the moral high ground that this nation was built on.  After being stuck under the leaded glass ceiling of European aristocracy we had finally succeeded in stealing and pillaging enough good land to give us all the opportunity to be kings of our own domain.  What could be more noble that that? 

Hebrew Fasion HH

Separation anxiety?

It is in the nature of man to seek out the transcendant with the hopes of a life full of discoveries.  When creator is removed from accessibility through a fallen/curse based worldview or theology we question our moments of connection not wanting to get our God soiled with the filth of our fallen humanity.  Many learn to settle for a sterile but orthodox set of propositions, a pitiful replacement for dynamic union with the living one. Some fill their thirst by continual faith exercises attempting to create a holy enough atmosphere to allow the sinless one to come hang out at least for a meeting or a conference. This approach sounds like spiritual bipolar exhausting yourself in order to be revived. Others seeing God cloistered safely far away have made it their mission to label all transcendent experience with their seal of the demonic anathema.  Could their fascination with what they are sure is manifest evil actually be driven by their need for spiritual discovery that their paradigm will not allow them to seek from God?

What if He/She has always been here, never abandoned the planet, the universe you or me? What if the separation of sin has always and only been located in the inner space of us human beings?

Non-dual Jesus, you rock my world!

Hebrew Fasion HH

So Jesus does lunch...

 

So Jesus does lunch with Siddhartha, Ghandi and James Dobson.  Jesus orders a superb bottle of wine.  Dobson orders the bacon cheeseburger plate.  Siddhartha and Ghandi split the vegan stir fry to save money and then take it out to the homeless guy at the door.  Jesus pulls out a sack lunch of fish and chips and has plenty for his friends from the East.  They converse for a couple of hours about everything under the sun. Every once and a while a comment would be made and Jesus in good Hebrew form chimes in a hearty Amen.  Who do you think inspired the most Amens from the Son of God?Hebrew Fasion HH

Two noble paths, which are not mutually exclusive: 1. To engage in the struggle against structures that seek to dominate and control how we think, live and relate.  2. To be a real human being that is free to choose how I will think, live and relate.

Unashamedly Naiive

What if: instead of bringing light into a so-called "dark world" we became aware of the inexpressible miracle of creation that we live, move and have our being in. Perhaps the darkness is actually in our minds, a constant loop of learned perceptions. Maybe when enough minds escape the loop of assumptions and awaken to the beauty all around us, we will begin to heal the wounds inflicted on one another in our blind strivings.

Infinite Ceasing

Skipping down the razors edge
   Poised between bliss and destruction

Drawn away from the familiar
    Pulled by invisible cords of longing

This too is a game of thought
   dancing around the edges
 of simply being or not being


Infinite ceasing you.....
                                     Terrorize.......................................ME
                                     Fascinate......................................Me
                                     Consume......................................me
                                     Kill.................................................me
 
                                                >-------Love -------<

It's an ugly white history

It is an ugly white history and the history of every conquering Empire has been ugly. The thing that sets apart European conquest is that it was done in the name of the Prince of Peace. Jesus didn't have anything good to say about Caesar but he didn't seem shocked by Caesar acting like the tyrant he was. The pharisees and rulers of the Jewish community got a major condemnation from the King of acceptance. The question isn't how could dominators act that way, but; how could they think they are Christ followers? Were they all insincere hypocrites? Was the problem found in the Western Christian religion itself? This wasn't the first taste of domination/evangelism for Western Christendom, it was involved from the early centuries. I am asking myself; was the product developed under Constantine the Church of Jesus or the cult of Rome? Was it the culmination of apologetic debates bringing longed for orthodoxy and unity to persecuted believers or the Imperial absolver of the genocidal tendencies of the sword of Gods wrath (you know the governing authorities of Romans 13 Constantine's favorite chapter)? Was it both? I think I'm supposed to say I think it's both in order to remain conciliatory. But if the hijacked faith of Jesus was responsible for this much misery, then the true followers of Jesus in united outrage with indigenous victims of this travesty should join our voices in protest and declare a true reformation of the Jesus way, rebuilding in a way that reflects the nature of our savior. I guess that would mean not letting the outrage remain our motivation while firmly not conceding the definition of "the Jesus way" back to the institutions of dominating empire.

Ecstatic joy!

Ecstatic Joy!

In thirty plus years in the western model of Christianity my encounters with joy have been sadly few and far between. What I have tasted has been so exquisite that it has been a major factor in me hanging on. The tragic thing is that I’ve always known that joy should be the normative state for one in communion with God. The message I got from leaders who often had less joy than me was to define it as something deep that you can’t always feel. Yeah. Right. Sure. I buy that.

I think that joy and all the fruits begin with acceptance. They emerge from right where you are in the moment. You don’t work it up and it isn’t waiting for you out there somewhere. It is found by becoming acquainted with yourself on the inside and cultivating the maintenance of your spirit. To put it heretically you likely won’t become a joyful Christian until you learn how to pray like a Buddhist or Hindu. Until we learn to come to God holistically, our spirit will remain a mystery to us. Real prayer pays deep attention to self as well as God. It is arrogance disguised, as humility when we think that ignoring our state of being will connect us with God. Prayer pays attention to our bodies, our aches and pains our stresses and draws upon His energy in us to those needs. Real prayer embraces our sexuality that gains it’s huge role in our lives not because of hormonal drive, but because the physical is a dim image of our intimate union with God and creation. The real thing has no stain of shame and is marked by its immense beauty rather than just pleasure. A maintained spirit is a natural conduit for joy that can be fairly consistent through many circumstances, if we keep it flowing as we relate to people and creation with deep compassion. Being self aware and soft-hearted allows us to be aware of the heart condition of others giving us the ability to meet them with compassion hearing the cry of their hearts rather the protective outer shell.

Love your mother

 

It's good now and then, to reflect and consider that the American dream has a long and inglorious tradition of being built on someone else's nightmare.

Our "superior" Western cultures have always been the pillars of trinitarian monotheism.... Empire, greed and self. Most indigenous cultures in the Americas had a profound and respectful concept of creator. Some of the pre-contact cultures were much more Godly and honorable than their brutal colonizers. Propositional faith condemns us to blindness. When I see the character of Jesus I honor that character regardless of creed.

Col. 3:5 says that covetousness is idolatry among a few other sins. So how devout does a capitalist have to be before they are justified before creator. It's never been about the form. It's always been about the heart. People who have been consumed by the fire of creators compassion know this but institutional religion tends to pour water on our passion in it's quest for conformity. Hebrew tradition is full of the splendor of creations glory. Your defense is of stoic Greek dualism and to some degree gnostic thought that dismisses the spirituality of creation. Western theology is a vehicle of Greek paradigms and the Western church is the priesthood of conquering Empire. Every atrocity done in the name of progress and expansion was done so with the sanction of the church both Catholic and Protestant. There were edicts and whole doctrines provided for everything from genocide to slavery. Jesus never has needed an organized religion to express the Kingdom. Caesar on the other hand may have played the cleverest game of all time when he seduced the early Jesus movement into the bed of Empire.

Power flows through a completed circuit. The power from Creator finds completion as we connect to our roots in creation.